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Near-Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Sensors
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Near-Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Sensors

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Physical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 11432

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Antonio Lázaro

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electronic, Electrical, and Automatic Engineering, University Rovira i Virgili, 43007 Tarragona, Spain
Interests: microwave device modeling; on-wafer noise measurements; RF-MEMS; antennas; RFID; UWB radar systems; vital-sign monitoring; wireless sensor networks; microwave systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. David Girbau

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electronic, Electrical and Automatic Engineering, University Rovira i Virgili, 43007 Tarragona, Spain
Interests: RFID and UWB technologies; the design of RFID tags and sensors using new materials used as sensors, operated at high frequencies; the use of NFC as enabling technology to power-up and read sensors to be used in collaborative networks in the IoT, in medical applications and in smart cities
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Near-field communication (NFC) is an emerging wireless short-range communication technology that is mainly used for radio frequency identification (RFID). Although near-field communication has existed for over a decade, this technology did not become widespread until its extensive use in payment systems. Every day, millions of people use NFC-enabled devices for payments. NFC technology enables simple and safe two-way interactions between electronic devices, allowing consumers to perform contactless transactions, access digital content, and connect electronic devices with a single tap. Most current smartphones also incorporate an NFC reader, and NFC systems are therefore gaining importance in the Internet of Things (IoT) scenario. In addition, NFC can put IoT devices under a user’s control and is easy to use with its “tap-and-go” function. The most important NFC IC manufacturers are introducing advanced integrated circuits (IC) with energy-harvesting capabilities. These chips collect part of the energy received by the magnetic field generated at the reader to provide an analog voltage output that can be used to power external electronics such as low-power microcontrollers or sensors. The progressive introduction of these ICs into the market enables the development of low-cost, battery-less, portable sensors. The inductive link is widely used in implantable biomedical sensor systems to achieve near-field communication (NFC) and wireless power transfer (WPT). NFC-based technology creates noninvasive opportunities for the development of smart sensors. In particular, green NFC sensors based on energy harvesting can help with the design of a new generation of low-cost smart wearables, advanced medical implants, and the simplification of the man–machine interface, which opens the door to a cooperative IoT for smart cities and Industry 4.0 applications. In addition to NFC-based sensors, other applications for wearables and implanted medical devices (IMD) based on UHF technology operating in the near-field have recently been developed. Chipless RFID is another technology with great potential for developing smart sensors operating at short distances.

In this Special Issue, we invite researchers and authors to submit original research and review articles on NFC-enabled sensors and other near-field RFID sensors. Special emphasis will be placed on emerging applications for the Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, and biomedical and smart tags. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

  • NFC energy harvesting;
  • Inductive wireless power transfer;
  • Implantable NFC sensors;
  • NFC antenna design and smartphone integration;
  • Applications based on NFC energy harvesting systems, including wearables, health, interaction, transport, and smart homes;
  • Smart chemical NFC-based sensors;
  • Security in NFC sensors;
  • NFC applications to Industry 4.0;
  • NFC sensors for IoT and collaborative systems;
  • Passive NFC sensors including chipless sensors;
  • Biocompatible materials and inkjet-printed technologies for NFC sensors;
  • Chipless RFID sensors;
  • UHF RFID sensors working in the near-field region;
  • Wearable and implantable UHF RFID sensors;
  • RFID sensors.

Prof. Dr. Antonio Lázaro
Prof. Dr. David Girbau
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (9 papers)

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Research

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13 pages, 1162 KiB  
Article
Tailoring the Performance of a Nafion 117 Humidity Chipless RFID Sensor: The Choice of the Substrate
by Giada Marchi, Viviana Mulloni, Fabio Acerbi, Massimo Donelli and Leandro Lorenzelli
Sensors 2023, 23(3), 1430; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23031430 - 27 Jan 2023
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 1370
Abstract
Chipless radio-frequency identification (RFID) sensors are not yet widespread in practical applications because of their limited sensitivity and selectivity when compared to more mature sensing technologies. The search for a suitable material to perform the sensing function has often been focused on the [...] Read more.
Chipless radio-frequency identification (RFID) sensors are not yet widespread in practical applications because of their limited sensitivity and selectivity when compared to more mature sensing technologies. The search for a suitable material to perform the sensing function has often been focused on the most common materials used in electrochemical sensing approaches, but little work has been done to directly relate the performances of chipless or microwave sensors to the characteristics of the materials used to fabricate them. In this work we are simulating the impact of the substrate material on the performances of a chipless RFID sensor for humidity detection. The dielectric parameters of the substrate material turn out to be very important to maximize the sensor performances, in relation to the operative range of the sensor (based on the desired application) and to the effective dielectric properties of the sensitive material used, we verify the simulated results with measurements of real chipless humidity cells with Nafion 117 sensitive material. We show which types of substrate are preferable for low-humidity detection and which substrates’ features are instead fundamental to operate in a wider humidity range. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near-Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Sensors)
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21 pages, 2778 KiB  
Article
Privacy-Aware Architectures for NFC and RFID Sensors in Healthcare Applications
by Emanuele Raso, Giulio Maria Bianco, Lorenzo Bracciale, Gaetano Marrocco, Cecilia Occhiuzzi and Pierpaolo Loreti
Sensors 2022, 22(24), 9692; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22249692 - 10 Dec 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2451
Abstract
World population and life expectancy have increased steadily in recent years, raising issues regarding access to medical treatments and related expenses. Through last-generation medical sensors, NFC (Near Field Communication) and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies can enable healthcare internet of things (H-IoT) systems [...] Read more.
World population and life expectancy have increased steadily in recent years, raising issues regarding access to medical treatments and related expenses. Through last-generation medical sensors, NFC (Near Field Communication) and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies can enable healthcare internet of things (H-IoT) systems to improve the quality of care while reducing costs. Moreover, the adoption of point-of-care (PoC) testing, performed whenever care is needed to return prompt feedback to the patient, can generate great synergy with NFC/RFID H-IoT systems. However, medical data are extremely sensitive and require careful management and storage to protect patients from malicious actors, so secure system architectures must be conceived for real scenarios. Existing studies do not analyze the security of raw data from the radiofrequency link to cloud-based sharing. Therefore, two novel cloud-based system architectures for data collected from NFC/RFID medical sensors are proposed in this paper. Privacy during data collection is ensured using a set of classical countermeasures selected based on the scientific literature. Then, data can be shared with the medical team using one of two architectures: in the first one, the medical system manages all data accesses, whereas in the second one, the patient defines the access policies. Comprehensive analysis of the H-IoT system can be useful for fostering research on the security of wearable wireless sensors. Moreover, the proposed architectures can be implemented for deploying and testing NFC/RFID-based healthcare applications, such as, for instance, domestic PoCs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near-Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Sensors)
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24 pages, 1601 KiB  
Article
Battery-Less NFC Potentiostat for Electrochemical Point-of-Care Sensors Based on COTS Components
by Antonio Lazaro, Ramon Villarino, Marc Lazaro, Nicolau Canellas, Beatriz Prieto-Simon and David Girbau
Sensors 2022, 22(19), 7213; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22197213 - 23 Sep 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2591
Abstract
This work studies the feasibility of using a battery-less Near-Field Communication (NFC) potentiostat for the next generation of electrochemical point-of-care sensors. A design based on an NFC microchip, a microcontroller, and a custom potentiostat based on an operational amplifier is presented. A proof-of-concept [...] Read more.
This work studies the feasibility of using a battery-less Near-Field Communication (NFC) potentiostat for the next generation of electrochemical point-of-care sensors. A design based on an NFC microchip, a microcontroller, and a custom potentiostat based on an operational amplifier is presented. A proof-of-concept prototype has been designed and used to quantify glucose concentration using commercial glucose test strips from chronoamperometry measurements. The device is harvested and the sensor is read using a mobile phone. The prototype uses an antenna loop covered with ferrite sheets to ensure stable operation of the electronics when the mobile phone is used as reader. The use of ferrite reduces the detuning caused by the proximity of the metal parts of the mobile phone. A comparison with a commercial glucometer device is provided. Results obtained using a commercial glucometer and those provided by the proposed potentiostat show an excellent agreement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near-Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Sensors)
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22 pages, 15980 KiB  
Article
Contactless Credit Cards Payment Fraud Protection by Ambient Authentication
by Ming-Hour Yang, Jia-Ning Luo, Murugesan Vijayalakshmi and Selvaraj Mercy Shalinie
Sensors 2022, 22(5), 1989; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22051989 - 3 Mar 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3838
Abstract
In recent years, improvements to the computational ability of mobile phones and support for near-field-communication have enabled transactions to be performed by using mobile phones to emulate a credit card or by using quick response codes. Thus, users need not carry credit cards [...] Read more.
In recent years, improvements to the computational ability of mobile phones and support for near-field-communication have enabled transactions to be performed by using mobile phones to emulate a credit card or by using quick response codes. Thus, users need not carry credit cards but can simply use their mobile phones. However, the Europay MasterCard Visa (EMV) protocol is associated with a number of security concerns. In contactless transactions, attackers can make purchases by launching a relay attack from a distance. To protect message transmission and prevent relay attacks, we propose a transaction protocol that is compatible with EMV protocols and that can perform mutual authentication and ambient authentication on near-field-communication-enabled mobile phones. Through mutual authentication, our protocol ensures the legitimacy of transactions and establishes keys for a transaction to protect the subsequent messages, thereby avoiding security problems in EMV protocols, such as man-in-the-middle attacks, skimming, and clone attacks on credit cards. By using ambient factors, our protocol verifies whether both transacting parties are located in the same environment, and it prevents relay attacks in the transaction process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near-Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Sensors)
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26 pages, 1569 KiB  
Article
EMV-Compatible Offline Mobile Payment Protocol with Mutual Authentication
by Jia-Ning Luo and Ming-Hour Yang
Sensors 2019, 19(21), 4611; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19214611 - 23 Oct 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3477
Abstract
In 2014, Yang proposed a method to enhance the current EMV credit card protocol (EPMAR). However, the protocol ignores the exceeding of a credit quota caused by multiple offline transactions, with the result that the amount spent can exceed the risk control scope. [...] Read more.
In 2014, Yang proposed a method to enhance the current EMV credit card protocol (EPMAR). However, the protocol ignores the exceeding of a credit quota caused by multiple offline transactions, with the result that the amount spent can exceed the risk control scope. In this paper, we proposed an EMV-compatible offline mobile payment protocol with mutual authentication (EOPMA) to enhance EPMAR. In EOPMA, we use the reverse hash chain technique to guarantee the payment, which solves the problem of credit quotas getting exceeded because of multiple offline payments. During a transaction, in addition to payment for merchandise, an offline authorization certificate for the transaction is sent to the merchant. The merchant can verify the correctness of the transaction in real time. Our protocol is compatible with the EMV standard, which is applicable to the retail environment of numerous merchants and effectively, making EMV transactions more secure and reliable. We use numerical analysis to examine the security and performance of the protocols. We formally check the correctness of EOPMA by using the Gong–Needham–Yahalom logic. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near-Field Communication (NFC) Sensors)
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21 pages, 2471 KiB  
Article
Near Field Communication-based Agricultural Management Service Systems for Family Farms
by Xue-fen Wan, Tao Zheng, Jian Cui, Fan Zhang, Zi-qian Ma and Yi Yang
Sensors 2019, 19(20), 4406; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19204406 - 11 Oct 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 6063
Abstract
This paper presents an agricultural management service system that aims to meet the needs of Internet of Things (IoT) information upgrades in China’s family farms. The proposed agricultural management service system consists of Near Field Communication (NFC) tags, in-field service nodes, and smartphones. [...] Read more.
This paper presents an agricultural management service system that aims to meet the needs of Internet of Things (IoT) information upgrades in China’s family farms. The proposed agricultural management service system consists of Near Field Communication (NFC) tags, in-field service nodes, and smartphones. NFC tags are used as the core identifier of various agricultural management elements. The in-field service node, which is based on a programmable system-on-chip with intellectual property cores (IP core), supports distributed agriculture device management and smartphone operations. Smartphones in the proposed system include the management assistant application (app) and management service app, which are designed for agricultural management support functions and agricultural management application requirements. Through this system, the needs of diverse agricultural management practices can be effectively satisfied by a unified system structure. The practical results show that the design can be used to construct diversified agricultural IoT information application service systems simply and effectively, and it is especially suitable for Chinese family farm operators who are implementing IoT information upgrades for smart agriculture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near-Field Communication (NFC) Sensors)
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16 pages, 4459 KiB  
Article
An Implantable Inductive Near-Field Communication System with 64 Channels for Acquisition of Gastrointestinal Bioelectrical Activity
by Amir Javan-Khoshkholgh and Aydin Farajidavar
Sensors 2019, 19(12), 2810; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19122810 - 24 Jun 2019
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 4785
Abstract
High-resolution (HR) mapping of the gastrointestinal (GI) bioelectrical activity is an emerging method to define the GI dysrhythmias such as gastroparesis and functional dyspepsia. Currently, there is no solution available to conduct HR mapping in long-term studies. We have developed an implantable 64-channel [...] Read more.
High-resolution (HR) mapping of the gastrointestinal (GI) bioelectrical activity is an emerging method to define the GI dysrhythmias such as gastroparesis and functional dyspepsia. Currently, there is no solution available to conduct HR mapping in long-term studies. We have developed an implantable 64-channel closed-loop near-field communication system for real-time monitoring of gastric electrical activity. The system is composed of an implantable unit (IU), a wearable unit (WU), and a stationary unit (SU) connected to a computer. Simultaneous data telemetry and power transfer between the IU and WU is carried out through a radio-frequency identification (RFID) link operating at 13.56 MHz. Data at the IU are encoded according to a self-clocking differential pulse position algorithm, and load shift keying modulated with only 6.25% duty cycle to be back scattered to the WU over the inductive path. The retrieved data at the WU are then either transmitted to the SU for real-time monitoring through an ISM-band RF transceiver or stored locally on a micro SD memory card. The measurement results demonstrated successful data communication at the rate of 125 kb/s when the distance between the IU and WU is less than 5 cm. The signals recorded in vitro at IU and received by SU were verified by a graphical user interface. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near-Field Communication (NFC) Sensors)
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21 pages, 14918 KiB  
Article
Color Measurement and Analysis of Fruit with a Battery-Less NFC Sensor
by Antonio Lazaro, Marti Boada, Ramon Villarino and David Girbau
Sensors 2019, 19(7), 1741; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19071741 - 11 Apr 2019
Cited by 41 | Viewed by 8266
Abstract
This paper presents a color-based classification system for grading the ripeness of fruit using a battery-less Near Field Communication (NFC) tag. The tag consists of a color sensor connected to a low-power microcontroller that is connected to an NFC chip. The tag is [...] Read more.
This paper presents a color-based classification system for grading the ripeness of fruit using a battery-less Near Field Communication (NFC) tag. The tag consists of a color sensor connected to a low-power microcontroller that is connected to an NFC chip. The tag is powered by the energy harvested from the magnetic field generated by a commercial smartphone used as a reader. The raw RGB color data measured by the colorimeter is converted to HSV (hue, saturation, value) color space. The hue angle and saturation are used as features for classification. Different classification algorithms are compared for classifying the ripeness of different fruits in order to show the robustness of the system. The low cost of NFC chips means that tags with sensing capability can be manufactured economically. In addition, nowadays, most commercial smartphones have NFC capability and thus a specific reader is not necessary. The measurement of different samples obtained on different days is used to train the classification algorithms. The results of training the classifiers have been saved to the cloud. A mobile application has been developed for the prediction based on a table-based method, where the boundary decision is downloaded from a cloud service for each product. High accuracy, between 80 and 93%, is obtained depending on the kind of fruit and the algorithm used. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near-Field Communication (NFC) Sensors)
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Review

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18 pages, 4708 KiB  
Review
Near-Field Communication Sensors
by Zhonglin Cao, Ping Chen, Zhong Ma, Sheng Li, Xingxun Gao, Rui-xin Wu, Lijia Pan and Yi Shi
Sensors 2019, 19(18), 3947; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19183947 - 12 Sep 2019
Cited by 49 | Viewed by 12743
Abstract
Near-field communication is a new kind of low-cost wireless communication technology developed in recent years, which brings great convenience to daily life activities such as medical care, food quality detection, and commerce. The integration of near-field communication devices and sensors exhibits great potential [...] Read more.
Near-field communication is a new kind of low-cost wireless communication technology developed in recent years, which brings great convenience to daily life activities such as medical care, food quality detection, and commerce. The integration of near-field communication devices and sensors exhibits great potential for these real-world applications by endowing sensors with new features of powerless and wireless signal transferring and conferring near field communication device with sensing function. In this review, we summarize recent progress in near field communication sensors, including the development of materials and device design and their applications in wearable personal healthcare devices. The opportunities and challenges in near-field communication sensors are discussed in the end. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Near-Field Communication (NFC) Sensors)
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